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Wednesday, July 15, 2015

Further reflections on the Greek situation.

From Pat Byrne *

With regards to the situation in Greece, It is important to avoid making the
currency issue (staying in the Euro or a return to the drachma) the central
question. To my mind a thousand times more important in Greece was the need for
Syriza to develop a democratic socialist plan before the election on which to
stand and win. I have written in previous posts how I think such a plan could
have been developed and why it would have made Syriza even more popular both in
Greece and abroad.

In that case a Syriza's win in January's election
would have had to be immediately followed by the democratic public ownership of
the banks and the rest of the Greek financial sector. This would have stopped
the outflow of funds from Greece which slowly but surely crippled its cash flow
and allowed the ECB to gain a much greater stranglehold on the economy and
economic life of the people.

Also important would have been to begin the immediate
implementation of a plan to democratize the Greek media so that the mass of the
population was able to receive the whole truth and not the lies of the
super-rich who dominate the Greek press and TV. Sure, it would have been
sensible for a Syriza government to visit the EU institutions and present a set
of demands including for a moratorium on the debt. Not with any illusions but
purely to demonstrate to the Greek people the nature of these institutions and
the inhuman, anti-working class policies that they were insisting on.

And to use the democratized and international media platform created to explain
to the working people of Europe how the neo-liberal policies were not designed
to provide good housekeeping but to cover up their past frauds and to deliver a
massive increase in wealth for the rich (at the expense of the rest of us).

If we recall the huge increase in Syriza's popularity
in the immediate weeks following the election and their first rounds of visits
to Brussels, Paris and so on. In my view the same thing would have happened
with a Syriza government pursuing a democratic socialist policy (possibly more
so). This would have provided the political opportunity to announce a
moratorium on repayment of all the debts and the speedy implementation of its
plans to reorganise the economy on democratic socialist lines. Something that
an even bigger majority of Greeks would have been able to understand and
support.

It is within that overall context that the decision
would have had to be taken over the currency. We don't have the technical
knowledge to know what the position would have been then. How much Euro
currency would have been available and so on. Certainly, from a tactical
position, if it had become obvious that an exit from the Euro was necessary it
would have been much better for a Syriza government to show that Greece was
thrown out than for it to leave.

But as I have stated in the past, in my opinion, euro
or drachma was never the key question. It was how a Syriza government in
partnership with the working people of Greece was going to reorganise the
economy, and the nature of the international campaign to win support for their
cause. Sadly, the Syriza leadership went into this fight with no plan beyond
appealing for mercy from its enemies. It was like a boxer entering the ring
with both hands tied behind his back and expecting to win by appealing to the
good nature of his opponent.

Ironically, the more radical Syriza would have been,
the more concessions it would have been offered by the IMF and the EU,
especially if its propaganda had been more effective at unmasking the
corruption behind the whole debt question and the pro- rich direction of their
policies.

As it was, setting up a Debt Truth Commission two
months into the government (calls for this were already several years old)
meant that it never had the time or the ammunition with which to expose the
debt from the outset. This allowed plenty of space for the bourgeois media to
sell their lies and to pose the issue as the Greeks against the rest of Europe,
when of course it was the working people of all the European countries who are
being hammered into the ground for the same reasons. The Debt Truth Commission
had to be have been done in opposition to become effective. Sadly, just one
more failure to prepare for the battle.